This article covers the history of Poland in the Middle Ages. This time covers roughly a millennium, from the 5th century to the 16th century. It is commonly dated from the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and contrasted with a later Early Modern Period. The time during which the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance and the Reformation unfolded is generally associated with the transition out of the Middle Ages, with European overseas expansion as a succeeding process, but such dates are approximate and based upon nuanced arguments.

Early Middle Ages

The first waves of Slavic migration settled the area of the upper Vistula River and elsewhere in the lands of present-day southeastern Poland and southern Masovia, coming from the upper and middle regions of the Dnieper River. Results of a genetic study by researchers from Gdańsk Medical University "support hypothesis placing the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the middle Dnieper basin".

High Middle Ages

The Polish state begins with the rule of Mieszko I of the Piast dynasty in the second half of the 10th century. Mieszko chose to be baptized in the Western Latin Church in 966. Following its emergence, the Polish nation was led by a series of rulers who converted the population to Christianity, created a strong kingdom and integrated Poland into the European culture. Mieszko's son Bolesław I Chrobry established a Polish Church province, pursued territorial conquests and was officially crowned, becoming the first King of Poland. This was followed by a collapse of the monarchy and restoration under Casimir I. Casimir's son Bolesław II the Bold became fatally involved in a conflict with the ecclesiastical authority, and was expelled from the country. After Bolesław III divided the country among his sons, internal fragmentation eroded the initial Piast monarchy structure in the 12th and 13th centuries. One of the regional Piast dukes invited the Teutonic Knights to help him fight the Baltic Prussian pagans, which caused centuries of Poland's warfare with the Knights and then with the German Prussian state. The Kingdom was restored under Władysław I the Elbow-high, strengthened and expanded by his son Casimir III the Great. The western provinces of Silesia and Pomerania were lost after the fragmentation, and Poland began expanding to the east. The consolidation in the 14th century laid the base for, after the reigns of two members of the Angevin dynasty, the new powerful Kingdom of Poland that was to follow.

See also

  • Culture of medieval Poland
  • Obotrites
  • Principality of Nitra

Notes

a."Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sclaveni and Antes"; transl. by Charles Christopher Mierow, Princeton University Press 1908, from the University of Calgary web site

b.This is the so-called allochthonic theory; according to the autochthonic theory the opposite is true

References

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